{"id":8147,"date":"2020-07-10T01:05:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-10T07:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=8147"},"modified":"2020-07-09T21:08:20","modified_gmt":"2020-07-10T03:08:20","slug":"a-declaration-of-independence-by-a-princeton-professor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=8147","title":{"rendered":"A Declaration of Independence by a Princeton Professor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joshua T Katz<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

In Congress, on July 4th, 1776, came the \u201cunanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.\u201d Signed by 56 men, many of whom were considered national heroes just a few minutes ago, it opens with a long and elegant sentence whose first words every American child knows, or used to: \u201cWhen in the Course of human events\u2026\u201d In Princeton, New Jersey, on July 4th, 2020, just two hours after my family and I sat around the festive table and read the Declaration aloud in celebration, a group of signatories now in the hundreds published a \u201cFaculty Letter<\/a>\u201d to the president and other senior administrators at Princeton University.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

This letter begins with the following blunt sentence: \u201cAnti-Blackness is foundational to America.\u201d One important difference between the two documents might wrongly be dismissed as merely cosmetic. In 1776 there were \u201cunited States\u201d but there was not yet the \u201cUnited States\u201d; in these past two months, by contrast, at a time when we are increasingly un-united, \u201cblack\u201d has become \u201cBlack\u201d while \u201cwhite\u201d remains \u201cwhite.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

I am friends with many people who signed the Princeton letter, which requests and in some places demands a dizzying array of changes, and I support their right to speak as they see fit. But I am embarrassed for them. To judge from conversations with friends and all too much online scouting, there are two camps: those cheering them on and those who wouldn\u2019t dream of being associated with such a document. No one is in the middle. If you haven\u2019t yet read it, do so now. Be warned: it is long.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

A Princeton faculty letter calls for eliminating academic freedom via a committee that would review all publications for racist thought (racist defined by the committee). It was issued on\u2026.July 4th. <\/span>https:\/\/t.co\/VeU9LICqbR<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) <\/span>July 6, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

There are four reasons why colleagues might have signed the letter.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joshua T Katz: In Congress, on July 4th, 1776, came the \u201cunanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.\u201d Signed by 56 men, many of whom were considered national heroes just a few minutes ago, it opens with a long and elegant sentence whose first words every American child knows, or used to: \u201cWhen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8147"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8147"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8148,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8147\/revisions\/8148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}